Gran Turismo 7 [Review]

Before this year, the only racing games that I've played were ones in Nintendo platforms. I grew up with Mario Kart and sometimes F-Zero or the occasional Need for Speed, and that's it. The PlayStation 5 was my first PlayStation properly, and playing Gran Turismo 7 (subtitled: the real driving simulation, nonetheless) was something not really on my radar.

It was difficult to not engage with driving in many PlayStation games that I was playing though, like Mafia or Grand Theft Auto; Of course that I've played games with driving before the PlayStation, like Cyberpunk 2077 or Sleeping Dogs, but these were few and far between, while suddenly in the end of 2024 I was playing several games with more realistic driving mechanics, one after another.

Yeah. Gran Turismo 7 The Real Driving Simulation started to become more interesting to me, but several other things were annoying me before even deciding it to pay or not for the game, like how rarely it enters on sale, the fact that the in-game currency can be bought with real money and the game has loot boxes while being always online and… Honestly, it seems daunting to play.

Big sale earlier this year and I caved in. The second I pressed play, something felt a bit… Strange. Weirder than I thought. The game starts with an unskippable (on the first view) opening cutscene, in a very emotional orchestral music ensemble that recounts the whole history of humanity and its interaction with technology as well as its progress. It felt like 2001: A Space Odyssey (the movie), but instead of having the dark unknown of how technology can be bad, here, on this emotional opening credits, the moment cars enter the scene, the narrative becomes utopia.

It starts to paint the progress of humankind tied to the progress of the Automobile. We see cities, factories, and populations grow, everything is getting closer and closer to modernity. Filled with drawings and pictures, it finishes the entire first segment of the opening credits with “the maestro: Lewis Hamilton” and as we get closer to modern day, the pinnacle of existence finally appears: a montage of Gran Turismo 7 races with sick guitar riffs and uplifting emotions. Gran Turismo is not only a game. As this opening sequence makes it clear: it is the pinnacle of everything we've done so far.

This was the quirkiest and weirdest opening that I've ever seen in a game, full stop. The lack of self awareness (sorry) and being overly serious makes everything inspirational (yay!) but really, really corny. And this corniness is all over the place. For instance, if you don't interact with the game for a little while, it shows facts about cars and human history as screensavers, it is really odd. The whole presentation of the game, is really odd and unique.

I was expecting the real driving simulation to start as real as possible. But on the main screen there's something called “music trial”, a music mini-game of some sorts that I needed to drive through the music's BPM – be it Beethoven or something from the original Soundtrack – until the end of the track. It was where I started and oddly arcade-like, not only in the mode itself, but also in the gameplay. Of course, I had to break and “stop pressing” accelerate, I get that this is not a kart game, but this is not as realistic as the branding makes it be. And then I noticed that I was really enjoying playing it.

The game itself has a “career mode” (the “Menus” on the “Café”) that are a series of races with specific conditions that I needed to do before unlocking a tournament that by being beaten unlocks new “Menus”. They also reward good cars, loot boxes and in-game currency. I needed to do some very well implemented tutorials to get my “license card” to progress through the career.

And while, yes, it is somewhat realistic to drive, there are lots of cheesy moments and exaggerated interactions that make the game really arcadey. I feel that always starting at last position regardless of progress in the tournaments is the only flaw on the gameplay loop for me, and while not necessarily frustrates, it makes the reward of getting first place a bit less relevant.

I'm also playing in 2025 and this is a Game-as-a-Service (Live-Service, Always Online) with a premium entry fee. The game today rewards lots of currency and cars throughout the career, and it isn't that hard to get some nice stuff, but wanting something more specific can be a chore, as some “legendary” cars can be really expensive. There are lots of in-game events and streamings that reward currency or loot boxes, as well as a nice gift on the player's birthday (tied to the PSN Account).

There's new content all the time and while most of it is free new content, Poliphony recently announced that paid DLC is coming next year. So the price tag of this game can be steeper than expected, and punishes the people that want to have all the cars in the game (not my scenario). Regardless, there are really a staggering amount of tracks with new ones being added every 6 months or so, as well as different modes and challenges to do on the post game with a harder post-game campaign. It is really feature rich and, as I said, quirky and weird.

The car customization is seriously wild, with decent granularity but an overall numbered score that makes it easy to understand what is good or not. Painting and putting decals on the car is nice, as well as customizing it and feeling how different one car is from another. There are “joke” cars and electric vehicles as well, and they are all unique. A lot of time was spent to make things particular to each car and each player, and it works.

I've played this game throughout 2025, and now I am playing it with the PlayStation VR 2, and when the race is going, it is borderline magical. That made me remember that not only I like this game, but I've never written something about it.

It is not as “chaotic fun” as Mario Kart, nor as fast and difficult as F-Zero, but it is unexpectedly charming, and clearly it was made with care and attention. It features a special and inventive UI, different tutorials, curious splash screens, dead-ass serious opening credits and a myriad of play modes (like VR) and things to do, packaged in a superbly polished game, unfortunately hindered by its always online requirement and bad monetization.

8/10

This artwork and the header images were from IGDb. The opening-credits and my birthday car were by me.